


sonnet xxiv

by tentaclemonster



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/F, Femslash February, Fingerfucking, Murder, No Dialogue, Snuff, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:06:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22706674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentaclemonster/pseuds/tentaclemonster
Summary: In a world where omegas can only become pregnant by eating an alpha’s heart, Adelaide is ready to be a mother and Catherine is the alpha she’s chosen to help her accomplish the task.
Relationships: Amoral Female Omega/Naive Female Alpha She Targets, Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Kudos: 154
Collections: Femslash February





	sonnet xxiv

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt ‘danse macabre’. This fic came about because of a discord discussion about how to make femslash a/b/o work that happened about five minutes before I saw a tweet which said that Loki got pregnant in one Norse myth by eating a heart. It’s fun how wires cross sometimes!
> 
> The title is from the Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem of the same name.

Adelaide Dennel didn’t think she was a monster. If asked, she would say that she was only someone who was doing what she had to in order to get what she needed in the only way she could. Were she an alpha or a beta, no one would fault her for her desires at all. It was nature and biology which made her an omega and so if anyone was to blame, it was them.

It was easy for betas and alphas to do it, either with those of their own designation or each other. All it took was one cock and one pussy, no condom blocking the sperm spilling out of the former from swimming its way through the latter, and no patch or pill or IUD to prevent the one little swimmer lucky enough to land on an egg from fertilizing it and calling it a day. 

Nine months and a little luck later and there you go – one baby. 

One tiny human life made easier than an omelet. 

Betas and alphas did it by accident every day, but for omegas the process wasn’t so simple. It wasn’t so random. An omega could fuck a thousand alphas all in the same night with no rubber and no birth control for miles around and they still wouldn’t be pregnant by the end of it. They’d be sore and probably end up with something nasty in their bloodstream, but they’d still be as barren as they had been since the day they were born, because omegas couldn’t get pregnant by accident or the regular sort of planning that hopeful beta and alpha mothers-to-be did. 

No, omegas could only have a child if they ate the heart of an alpha. 

It was something that could only be done on purpose with the most explicit intent via a method that was messier than any orgy could ever be and which was, for centuries, entirely illegal in nearly every country in the world except for in certain places where omegas had access to legal and strictly regulated organ donation registries. 

Every omega learned about all the ins and outs of the reproductive habits of the unlucky one percent of the population they belonged to in sex ed along with everyone else in their class. If they were lucky, and if their parents cared about them enough to spare them the surprise and all their classmates staring at them like they were a monster that came with it, they learned about it before the fifth grade and had time to prepare for a lifetime of being judged as different from everyone else and possibly dangerous to any alpha unlucky enough to catch their eye.

Adelaide’s parents cared about her. 

They cared enough to explain what being an omega meant and to assure her that her designation didn’t mean anything bad about her, that it didn’t even mean she could never have children. There was fostering, they told her, and adoption, and if she really felt the need to have children of her own, then there were always alpha organ donors who left their hearts for omegas to use when they died. It was hard to get on the list, but not impossible. They had pamphlets in bright pastel colors to show her all of it, each of them with a picture of a smiling and heavily pregnant omega on the front and clinically reassuring platitudes on the inside

Adelaide had options, her parents assured her. Her biology didn’t dictate her life. It didn’t dictate her choices. Most importantly, in their view, it didn’t dictate whether or not she would be a good person who could only do good things with her life.

At the time, Adelaide didn’t particularly care about the whole thing. She was a child herself, after all – why would she? She didn’t  _ want _ a child of her own. Not an adopted one or one she grew in herself after eating some alpha’s heart. The thought of doing it, of the heart eating and the baby having both, were repulsive to her. They made her scrunch up her nose and want to will the very idea of it away. 

She didn’t think she would ever want to do it. She didn’t think she would ever change her mind. For quite a few years, she was right.

Adelaide spent the rest of her childhood and adolescence a happy, healthy omega who rarely thought about being an omega at all. She started taking suppressants when she was thirteen and started her period and therefore never had to deal with the most annoying part of being an omega, the heats. She studied hard and made it to the top of her classes. She didn’t date as she had no desire to, though occasionally people – mostly betas, both male and female alike – would ask her out. 

She wasn’t the most popular person in school, but she was likable. She found it easy to get along with everyone, to listen more than speak and keep her mouth shut when she had to, to say the right things to make people think she was their best friend even though she considered all of them little more than acquaintances and found it easy to forget about them when they weren’t around. Sometimes people might look at her strangely when they first met her and found out she was an omega, but that was the extent of it. If anyone had anything negative to say about her designation, they didn’t do it where she could hear.

By high school, even those strange looks were gone. Being an omega wasn’t something her peers looked at her funny for but something that made her a little mysterious. A little interesting. At worst, it was something they found easy to forget, but plenty of her classmates were curious. They wanted to know what it was like. They wanted to talk to her about infamous omegas throughout history and the rare omega who made the news in the modern age and see what she thought. That Adelaide was willing to humor them and didn’t get offended by their curiosity made them like her. It made them think she was cool. Adelaide also had extracurriculars running both track and the school newspaper and this opened up her social circle greatly, giving her plenty of people to spend her time with and who wanted to be around her, who never noticed if maybe she was a little more aloof than they were, if she never actually confided in them as they confided in her and only ever smiled or laughed after they did, like she’d been prompted.

She had no big plans for the future but thought that someday she might be a writer, if anything, because she had to be something – though not a writer of fiction, but history. Her favorite way to spend her free time was looking back at old copies of the school paper and reading about people twenty, thirty or more years ago. She thought it might be fun to write about that, about the past and the people who lived in it. She found the lives of others fascinating and the most genuine joy she had came from ferreting out some fact, some new detail, about a person she found interesting’s life and adding it to the bigger picture she had of them.

Adelaide had a good childhood with few moments of unhappiness along the way, but eventually her childhood ended. She graduated from school and moved out of her parents’ home. She got an apartment of her own, a dull job writing fluff pieces for medium-sized paper that paid the bills and didn’t take up much of her time, and her social life seemed to dwindle to nothing overnight. 

No longer having any reason to see her peers every day at school, it was all too easy to not answer their calls or respond to their messages and just let her friendships with them slip by like old memories that weren’t worth keeping around.

It was fine, at first, but Adelaide got older year by year and by the time she was twenty-five she started to feel lonely for the first time in her life. That loneliness bled into an emptiness inside of her like a hollow place that a knife had carved out, turning the center of her into nothing more than a bloody crevice left behind. She began to long for something more. Not a friend or a partner, not her parents, but something else. Something that was hers. Some _ one _ that was hers.

Adelaide had read all the literature – the pamphlets her parents gave her as a kid and the heavier books she read when she was old enough to understand the jargony language they were written in alike. She knew what was happening. It wasn’t an uncommon condition for omegas to develop as they got closer to thirty. 

Their biology made them want a family – or, more specifically, a child – and when an omega’s body had yet to produce one, it began to punish them. Depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation – all of them nasty symptoms caused by hormones behaving badly. There were medications for it and not just pills, but support groups and therapies. There were entire branches of medicine dedicated to omega biology and psychology that had studied the issue at length and determined over the course of time that it was treatable. That the horrors past omegas had experienced and afflicted were preventable. That no omega had to suffer or cause suffering to some alpha in order to relieve it.

Adelaide thought she was doing a good job hiding what she was going through until she visited her parents at Christmas. They suggested, rather awkwardly and with concern in their voices, that she might benefit from speaking with her doctor if she was feeling down. That’s the way they phrased it –  _ down _ . Not depressed or insane or violent or anything else that anyone else might have said. They cared about her enough still not to insult her. 

They didn’t ask about how she felt beyond that advice, either, however. They cared enough about themselves to not want to know the answer. 

Adelaide made the right noises at them, agreeing with what they said, and made empty promises that she would make an appointment, that she would open up and accept whatever her doctor had to say.

Of course, she never did. She never planned to. She knew that even as she lied to them.

That empty place inside of her was a living thing. It spoke to her in pangs and throbs and waves rather than words. It made clear what it needed to be filled and Adelaide…

Adelaide was lonely. She wanted to fill that emptiness. The answer to how to do was a clearly heard as her own heartbeat was to her. She needed a child of her own, a child that had grew in her and been birthed from her. A child that could be a part of her, an extension of her, who would love her how no one else could. Nothing else would satisfy the yawning chasm inside of her. Adelaide knew that quickly enough to not even try.

And she knew that the only way she could get the child she wanted was to make it herself.

*

Adelaide was careful about finding the perfect candidate. 

It had to be an alpha, of course, as no beta would work. It had to be someone who would be attracted to her, who would be trusting enough or naive enough or perhaps just desperate enough to go somewhere alone with a strange omega. It had to be someone she could overpower if necessary.

A female alpha, Adelaide decided from the start. It would be easier with a woman than a man. Female alphas were more common than males and usually smaller. All the studies said that they were more affected by omegas than their male alpha counterparts who saw little difference between omegas and betas unless they were particularly sensitive to the allure omegas put off. Besides, Adelaide had always preferred women to men anyway. It wasn’t a difficult choice to make, but only the right one.

She started her search online – dating apps, facebook, even craigslist. She browsed through what had to be hundreds of profiles, hundreds of listings from strangers looking for love or sex or just friendship. It was easy to pick the alphas out from the betas and the occasional omegas as it was in the way of things now to list one’s designation on their social media along with their name and age and sexuality. She looked at hundreds of faces, staring them down, analyzing, calculating the odds that her child would have their eyes or their bone structure, trying to mesh in her head her features with those of these women she didn’t know.

She eliminated those whose looks she didn’t like and those who were too tall or too muscled and might prove to be a threat if things went badly. She narrowed her list and delved even further into the lives of the women she was researching. She sniffed out information about them like a bloodhound, hunting from site to site. Information about their family health history was most vital – women with close relatives who had cancer or Alzheimer's or other diseases were eliminated due to the risk of passing a higher risk of developing them off to her child – and personality second most.

Adelaide eliminated women who seemed too outspoken, too self-confident, and those who went on too many dates and were too used to being paid attention to by other suitors. She paid more attention to those who were lonely, who had few if any friends, who posted status updates that looked like ploys for attention and then updated with something even more morose when they failed to receive more than a handful of likes or who tended to play depressing music on repeat on their Last.FM.

Her list of potentials narrowed further until she had just a few and she followed them relentlessly, neglecting her own needs so that she could dig out some new piece of knowledge that might make one alpha better than the others. That might make one stand out as more viable than all the rest

Adelaide did this for days until finally she narrowed her search down to just one.

*

Catherine Clement – not Katherine, not Cate, but sometimes Cat when she referred to herself in third person in her tumblr tags – was four years younger than Adelaide. She had sky blue eyes and hay colored hair, a body that was short and slender, skin golden, and breasts that would be no more than a handful in Adelaide’s palms. 

She was pretty, but not overwhelmingly so. Judging by the self-deprecating nature of many of her blog posts, Adelaide thought she would be surprised to even be called cute.

Catherine was born to an older alpha father who married her younger alpha mother. Her father had died in 2013 of old age (there was a facebook post about this with hundreds of comments – Mr. Clement, apparently, was a popular man) and her mother had since remarried (a beta this time) and moved to Montreal. 

As far as Adelaide could tell, Ms. Clement – who’d kept her first husband’s name – was in perfect health. She was expecting her second child in June, a late baby for a woman now in her middle age. Adelaide felt a pang in her chest at seeing picture after picture of the woman and her extended stomach, her face glowing and captions beneath the photos radiating happiness, and she knew the feeling to be jealousy. 

The majority of Catherine’s facebook friends were family members who left the obligatory ‘happy birthday’ messages every March 5 th , the occasional requests for her help in some game or another, and little else. The rest were friends from high school who never interacted with Catherine at all and a few strangers who Adelaide thought might be spam accounts just from their stock image profile pictures. Catherine’s twitter had few followers and all of them were strangers. Her tumblr and instagram were the same, but still Catherine was active on all of them and it was easy to learn what kind of person she was through what she posted.

Catherine wanted to be an English teacher, but was currently working at the local library until college started in the fall. Most of her social media posts were about her work – her twitter full of book puns and jokes, her instagram full of pictures of books that just came in, books that were just returned, and activities the library was having including one where children read picture books to a golden retriever who sat docilely in the middle of the floor and listened. Adelaide felt another pang at seeing them and thought of taking her own child to such a thing one day, hoping that day would be soon.

Catherine liked succulent plants and mystery novels. She liked pictures of tubes of expensive lipsticks in bright, popping colors and floral summer dresses, though she never wore anything like it herself; all her selfies showed her wearing sweaters or t-shirts, mostly solid colored, and jeans with sneakers, light concealer on her face with just a little clear gloss on her lips. She had a simple style, prioritizing comfort over fashion. Her bedroom was neat. The selfies she posted with the room in the background showed that it was filled with meticulously arranged bookshelves that had more books than knickknacks, a perfectly made bed, and some other bits of furniture. She owned a physical radio that kept on her bedside table and listened to daily, the variety channel and public radio primarily, and she was proud of not owning an iPod like it was an accomplishment she had earned.

Adelaide learned that Catherine was meticulous and sentimental and smart and occasionally sarcastic, but above all of that what Catherine was was lonely. 

She said it often enough, talking about how she had no friends and had never been on a date both in short joking tweets and longer, horribly despair-ridden blog posts. Adelaide observed her leaving comments to spark conversations on certain posts only for them to disappear later, deleted when she got no response. She made jokes that weren’t jokes fairly often about how she would kill just to have someone to talk to and then covered them up by posting a flurry of unrelated things on top of them, burying her own desperate longing like a body in a grave.

She was an alpha who was pleasing enough to look at, who had a healthy family tree, who wasn’t a match for Adelaide physically, and who was so lonely and desperate and needy for someone – anyone – to notice her that if someone paid her just a fraction of the attention she wanted, she’d soak it up like a flower that had been in drought ridden ground for years.

It made her vulnerable.

It made her malleable. 

It made her perfect for Adelaide’s purpose. 

*

Observing Catherine in the solid space of the real world was just as easy as it was online.

It helped that she didn’t have much of a varied routine. She left her home at the same time every morning, went to work, took a break at noon at a cafe down the block from the library, and left work for her apartment at a little after eight. Sometimes she stopped at the store to buy groceries. Once, she took a Lyft instead of walking home. It was raining that night and she hadn’t brought an umbrella with her that morning. That was the greatest deviation in Catherine’s life, a single blip in the regularity of a well-ordered twenty-four hour day.

Adelaide followed her everywhere. 

She started coming in to the library, offering a pleasant smile of greeting to the head librarian at the desk and settling down at a table where she read history books, her mind only half on them while the rest were on Catherine who was busy stocking shelves or on her phone. She followed Catherine to the cafe on her lunch break and sat a few tables away. She followed her home at night and waited until her lights went out before going home herself. She followed her online activity when she got there and she was back every morning, watching Catherine’s apartment from the building across the street, ready to repeat it all again.

Adelaide saw everything. She learned everything. She found that Catherine was prettier in person than she was in pictures. She looked more alive, more real, with expressions and a way of walking and a way of constantly tucking an ever falling lock of hair behind her ear that didn’t translate into still photographs. Her scent was appealing to Adelaide the way all alpha scents were to an omega, but there were notes in Catherine’s smell that she found more pleasing than usual like citrus and pepper with ginger underneath. A smell that came with a light itch in her nose and a watering on her tongue. Pleasant and rich. Her voice was deeper than Adelaide would have expected, but that was pleasant enough, too.

Nothing Adelaide saw or heard or smelled dissuaded her. All of it only made her more convinced that Catherine was the right choice, that she’d found the one.

Catherine never noticed that Adelaide was following her. She never acted like she suspected she was being followed at all.

Adelaide was careful about it, of course. She wore her most boring clothing and only the barest amount of makeup so that she wouldn’t stand out, her suppressants blocked her omega scent and allure almost entirely, and she didn’t go out of her way to make sure Catherine didn’t see her like some might be inclined to do. She didn’t act suspicious, like she was doing something she didn’t want anyone to find out about, but rather like she belonged exactly where she was, whether it was the library or the cafe or the street.

If Catherine had ever noticed that Adelaide seemed to be everywhere she was lately, then Adelaide had an excuse prepared along with a joke about how she had noticed Catherine too and wondered if perhaps Catherine was stalking  _ her,  _ but Catherine never noticed and Adelaide thought it was just as much because of her confidence and precautions as it was the fact that Catherine likely would never think anyone would consider following her in the first place. 

Contingencies aside, Adelaide preferred it that way. It was better that Catherine didn’t suspect, better that Adelaide could control their first meeting rather than have it happen because Catherine thought it was strange that the same woman who came into her workplace every day also came into the cafe she ate at. Adelaide needed that control. It would be vital to getting what she wanted. 

When she got home one day after following Catherine about a week after she first started, she knew it was time to finally step up her plan. She took her pharmacy orange bottle of suppressants out of her bathroom cabinet, unscrewed the white top, and upended them all in the toilet before flushing them – down, down, down and away.

*

Adelaide’s costume consisted of a red rose printed black dress that showed off her legs, a short black pleather jacket, black boots with silver zippers running up their sides, and lips painted with a shade of lipstick as red as fresh blood that shined wet like an invitation whenever the light caught it. 

All of it was bought with Catherine in mind. All of them were things that Catherine had liked pictures of online down to the exact brand. Adelaide had even had her previously long black hair cut to match the short bob that Catherine had gushed over in the comments of a model’s picture with the same style, a rave review filled with a row of smiling emojis, heart-eyed and admiring.

Adelaide had been off of her suppressants for days by that point and her omega scent had gone from non-existent to butterscotch-rich. Any alpha would be able to smell it and know what she was. Their mouths would water, their bodies would respond, and almost all of them would be wary of her the way everyone was a little wary of omegas deep down inside, no matter that it wasn’t PC to admit it. Most alphas might commit her image and her scent to memory and leave it that. Some of them might be as bold as to offer her a smile.

Adelaide was certain that Catherine wouldn’t be most alphas. Their first real meeting would not be the only one. It would not end with a smile and not a word said before they went their separate ways and never saw one another again. Adelaide wouldn’t let it.

*

Adelaide entered the library that morning the way she had done so for so many days already, letting the glass door shut quietly behind her and casting a smile in the direction of the head librarian who stood behind the front desk. The librarian, a beta, only smiled back. Nothing about Adelaide’s changed appearance or scent took her by surprise. It was possible the woman didn’t even recognize Adelaide as a regular patron at all, but as some new person entirely.

Adelaide inhaled softly and could tell where Catherine was immediately by her scent alone, the smell of her wafting through like dandelion seeds dancing through the air. Adelaide could feel the anticipation grow in her chest, but she resisted her instinctive urge to make a beeline to Catherine’s location, knowing that it would only make her seem forward at best and suspicious at worst.

Instead, Adelaide meandered. 

She walked slowly along the aisles of the library, her eyes drifting across the shelves with an interest that wasn’t entirely feigned. Occasionally she saw a title that piqued her interest and she pulled it off its shelf, reading the summary of it and thumbing through its pages. Most of the books she picked up, she put back, but a few she kept, holding them in her arms as she continued her unhurried pace, getting ever closer to her quarry.

Catherine was stocking shelves down the reference aisle, two shelves full of dictionaries and encyclopedias and other heavy texts. Adelaide didn’t look at her as she turned the corner into the aisle, but only kept looking at the shelf opposite the one Catherine was stocking, the perfect picture of a patron too engrossed in a library’s contents to notice the person who worked there even when they were just a few feet away.

Mentally, however, Adelaide was completely aware of Catherine.

She could tell the exact moment Catherine became aware of her, too. 

She could hear the pause in the sound of books being slid onto shelves and then a soft inhale that audibly hitched. She could feel the heavy weight of eyes on her, making the hair at the back of her neck stand on end. She could smell Catherine’s scent grow stronger, the usual citrusy smell Adelaide had gotten used to in the time she had been following Catherine now mixing with the heady salted aroma of an alpha showing interest in an omega. She could discern Catherine’s interest in her like it was a physical sensation, a person’s hot breath againt her ear and fingertips scratching lightly along her skin.

Adelaide noticed all of it, but she pretended she didn’t even know Catherine was there at all. 

She kept her eyes on the shelves and moved slowly up the aisle until she reached the end of it and then she turned and headed back to the front desk, checked out her books, and left.

She didn’t return to the library for another two days, only stayed home reading Catherine’s posts online about the omega she saw at work and couldn’t stop thinking about, taking great pleasure in the knowledge that she was making Catherine stew and wait and that she was in control of the entire situation.

*

It took another three visits to the library before Catherine got up the nerve to speak to Adelaide. 

Adelaide pretended to ignore her again on the first visit while Catherine stood nearby nearly vibrating with interest, then noticed her and gave her a soft, gentle smile on the second. On the third, she pretended she needed to grab a book on the shelf Catherine stood in front of and Catherine apologized for standing in her way, her words stumbling, her cheeks flushed, her scent growing as she stepped back and Adelaide drew closer to her, nearly touching her as she reached up to grab some mystery novel that she had little interest in but picked up because it was a convenient prop that she couldn’t help but use since it was there anyway.

Catherine noticed the title and became excited by it. She asked Adelaide if she’d read any other books by the same author and Adelaide lied and said she had, telling Catherine her opinions on the author’s work that were really Catherine’s own opinions that Adelaide had read on her social media, memorized and paraphrased. 

Not that Catherine knew that, of course. Catherine only thought that she and Adelaide thought the same thing and liked it, that she and Adelaide were two of a kind and had so much in common, at least where their tastes in fiction were concerned. Adelaide had always been good at holding up her end of a conversation and then some even when she cared little about the topic at hand herself and it proved a valuable skill to have in this venture.

She charmed Catherine with it, drawing her out of her shyness by speaking exclusively of things that she knew Catherine would be excited to talk about. When sharing her thoughts, she said what she knew Catherine wanted to hear. Adelaide presented herself as forthcoming, but not too dominant; friendly, but not overly so. She flirted with Catherine, but not in any obvious way – a hair tucked behind her ear here, a blush forced on her cheeks by thinking of the things she wanted to do to Catherine there. 

Flirtation that Catherine wouldn’t automatically know  _ was _ flirtation. Flirtation that she would wonder about, agonizing over whether it was too much to hope that someone like Adelaide might be interested in a lonely little alpha like her.

Adelaide left the library with a happy smile and the promise to tell Catherine what she thought of the book she checked out next time she came in. When she got home, she read Catherine’s posts gushing about her without using her name and she knew it would only be a matter of time until Catherine was hers.

*

Seducing Catherine was easy. 

Easier, in fact, than Adelaide had imagined.

Adelaide hadn’t exactly expected it to be hard, but the ease with which Catherine accepted her into her life was as simple as sliding a hand into a well fitting glove. She lit up every time Adelaide visited her at work, spoke to her with obvious pleasure at every ounce of attention that Adelaide gave her, and accepted readily when Adelaide suggested one day that they might spend her lunch break together at cafe across the street. 

When the subject of Adelaide’s designation came up, Catherine ate the sob story Adelaide fed her about how difficult it was to be an omega and how much what people thought of her for it had hurt her as a child like it was being fed to her by hand and she was so desperate for more that she licked the taste of it right off Adelaide’s fingers. She enjoyed more how self-possessed Adelaide was now, how Adelaide had overcome her previous low confidence to become who she was today, how Adelaide told her she had come to accept being an omega and took pride in it.

Adelaide made Catherine admire her with her stories about herself. She made Catherine like her by doing her best to reflect in herself what qualities she knew from careful investigation Catherine most wished she had. She made Catherine need her by giving her the attention she was so desperate for and that no one else would offer.

And she made Catherine want her one smile, one laugh, one blush at a time.

*

Their first kiss happened nearly two weeks after the first time they spoke. 

Two weeks of seeing each other nearly every day, of lunches together, of texting after exchanging numbers, of talking and laughing and letting their gazes linger too long on each others eyes.

Two weeks of Adelaide gently pulling Catherine closer to her while watching her every move both online and off during the moments they weren’t together, smug in her knowledge of how obsessed Catherine was growing towards her, just as obsessed as Adelaide knew herself to be.

Two weeks until finally one day at the cafe with their heads bent close together over some book until they raised them at the same time and their eyes met and it felt as natural as anything for Adelaide to close the distance between them and press her lips softly to Catherine’s mouth, the kiss gentle and lingering. 

Adelaide looked away quickly after she pulled back, like she was embarrassed, shy, her eyes going back down to the book, but she felt Catherine’s eyes stay on her for a beat before she did the same, the smell of her desire perfuming the air around them.

*

It’s a leisurely stroll from that first gentle kiss to something more. 

Adelaide knew she could have accelerated things without much effort. It would have taken little persuasion to get Catherine back to her apartment soon after that first kiss they shared, to make up some excuse and take her home and do what she had to. It would all be over and done with just like that – but Adelaide found she liked taking it slow better. She enjoyed savoring the hunt, savoring Catherine. She enjoyed making every moment before her time with Catherine was over count, making memories she could look back to years from now when she had her child with her and she was feeling nostalgic about how she came to have them.

Adelaide imagined that was what omegas felt hundreds of years ago back before people really understood their biology and the law stepped in to police their behavior, when all they had was the instinctive drive to find an alpha and get a child from them in the only way they could, when they had to be cunning about it and couldn’t get information about their prey with just a few swipes at a smart phone screen to know the most effective way to go about it like Adelaide herself had.

Their first kiss was only the start of something more, the first note played in a longer melody. That one gentle press of closed mouths together turned into longer kisses, opened mouthed ones. It turned into Adelaide’s tongue slipping between Catherine’s lips, penetrating her mouth to taste the sweet wet inside of it while Catherine moaned into it, muffled and wanting, and inexpertly kissed Adelaide back.

Kissing turned to touching – hands held, then hands drifting. 

Catherine liked it when Adelaide put a hand on the back on her neck when they kissed and liked it more when Adelaide’s fingernails caressed along the skin there before slipping down her clothed back, down to the hem of her shirt where it would slip under to touch the skin beneath. She made soft, needy little noises in Adelaide’s mouth when Adelaide’s fingers moved along her bra strap, going under it, playing with its clasp and reminding her of how easy it would be to undo the hooks and have Catherine’s small breasts come free. 

Adelaide teased at her tits, her knuckles brushing against the soft swell of them from the side, but she didn’t touch them directly at first no matter how Catherine’s scent grew when she got close, her arousal as thick as smoke rising at every near indecent touch, her quiet frustration obvious every time Adelaide didn’t cross the line into doing more.

Adelaide imagined that Catherine thought she was just being respectful – not wanting to push Catherine too far, too fast – but respect wasn’t the point of it. 

Making Catherine desperate, making her needy and wanting and blinded by her desire, was. 

There was a power in that for Adelaide, a sense of control that turned her on more than any intimate act she performed with Catherine did, more than any touch or kiss. Being able to make Catherine want her, to make Catherine beholden to her, reminded Adelaide that she was the one with all the control. The way Catherine looked at her and begged without words for Adelaide to do more only for Adelaide to crush her hope by pulling back before more could be done made Adelaide feel like a god. 

It was enough to satisfy Adelaide for awhile, but she began to grow tired of it soon enough. There was a purpose to everything she was doing to Catherine that went beyond just leading the alpha around like a puppet on a string, after all, and Adelaide never forgot it. 

If a part of her was remorseful that her time with Catherine was coming to a close, the rest of her was taut with anticipation over what would happen once this thing was done. She would have a new life, a new beginning, and if she began to feel nostalgic for those moments with Catherine, her hands on Catherine’s body and Catherine desperate for her touch?

There were plenty of other alphas in the world and Adelaide had never liked being an only child herself. Maybe someday she would feel that the one baby she got from Catherine wasn’t enough.

*

It was raining on the day things came to an end, not a heavy downpour but a gentle drizzle. The sky was a blanketed, pale grey and the air was warm enough that it was pleasant out even if you needed an umbrella to really enjoy it. 

Adelaide stopped by the library late in the evening about thirty minutes before the end of Catherine’s shift. She knew that night was going to be  _ the  _ night already. It felt right, like everything she’d been doing in pursuing Catherine had reached an inevitable turn in the road that would lead her to her final destination that was months in the making.

From the way Catherine flushed and smiled softly at how Adelaide looked at her, she obviously knew it, too, even though she certainly had no idea the entirety of what Adelaide had planned, and when Adelaide asked Catherine if she wanted to go back to her apartment with her when she was done working, Catherine agreed like she expected the question and knew she’d say yes already. 

Adelaide stayed until the library closed, spending the time reading at a table, and then waited patiently while Catherine locked up. They walked together down the wet sidewalk, huddled close under the same umbrella, Adelaide’s arm wrapped around Catherine as she led her where she wanted to go, making all the right noises and replies as Catherine nervously chattered away about the book she was currently reading.

They got to Adelaide’s apartment within minutes and Adelaide shook the rain off the umbrella and closed it once they were in the dry warmth of the building. Adelaide’s apartment was on the ground floor and she let Catherine go in first after she got the door unlocked, shrugging off her coat as she watched Catherine look around the open room with clear curiosity in her eyes, eager to see every detail of the parts of Adelaide’s life she was only just now seeing and making no effort to hide it. 

She jumped a little when Adelaide came up behind her, putting her hands on Catherine’s shoulders, but she didn’t resist as Adelaide turned her gently around. Catherine only looked up at Adelaide, her eyes large and shining, her mouth parted, a flush on her cheeks, anticipation so alive within her that she nearly glowed with the warmth of it. 

Her eyes slid closed as Adelaide moved into her space, closing the distance between them. A soft sigh escaped her mouth as Adelaide kissed it and pressed her tongue inside. They kissed softly, slowly, a slick dance of tongues caressing and lips moving. Adelaide pushed Catherine’s jacket off of her with the hands she had still on her shoulders and Catherine’s only response was to shiver, pressing closer to Adelaide’s body to make up for her coat’s lost warmth.

They stumbled to Adelaide’s bedroom, their clothes coming off in bits and pieces along the way. By the time Catherine’s back hit the mattress, she was wearing nothing but her socks and panties and Adelaide had nothing on at all. Catherine leaned back on her elbows looking up at Adelaide, her skin ruddy, her breath panting, her expression nervous but not resistant, all of her ready for Adelaide to take and use and devour. 

Adelaide watched her back for a moment, staring until she saw Catherine start to fidget and look away, and only then did she deign to crawl on the bed on top of her and start to kiss her all over again. Catherine kissed back, needy and hungry for all the attention Adelaide could provide.

Adelaide’s hands ran down Catherine’s body while their mouths were pressed together. Her fingers squeezed into the soft skin of Catherine’s belly, fingertips clawing a path around her waist to the small of her back and then moving downwards to dig into the meat of her ass, even going so far as to slide between her cheeks to brush over the hole she had there, a part of her taking perverse delight in how it made Catherine shudder beneath her and squirm like she liked it, wanted it, actually desired for Adelaide to penetrate her from behind. 

When her hand slipped under Catherine’s panties and cupped her labia, her fingers parting her outer lips and feeling inside her folds, she found Catherine wet with desire already. Catherine arched into the touch, moaning into Adelaide’s mouth, the sound cutting off into a whine when Adelaide pushed one finger inside. Catherine’s cunt was more wet inside, hot and gripping. It took Adelaide’s finger easily and she could feel the walls of Catherine’s cunt squeezing around her. The second finger she pushed in made Catherine feel tighter, her cunt pulsing around Adelaide. When the third finger went in, Catherine writhed beneath the feeling of the three digits fucking her, twisting inside.

Catherine didn’t resist when Adelaide took one of her hands with the one she wasn’t using to fuck Catherine and put it between her own legs. It took Catherine a second to understand what she wanted, but soon enough her own fingers were working at Adelaide’s cunt – clumsy, virgin movements, but she knew where Adelaide’s clit was and seemed to be trying to mimic Adelaide’s own movements within her. 

If it wasn’t as good as it could have been, Adelaide didn’t care. Her pleasure wasn’t her primary concern and still, it was good enough that she could feel her body responding to it, her hips fucking themselves down against Catherine’s hand while Catherine squirmed and panted and whined beneath her own ministrations. 

She could tell that Catherine was getting close by how her breathing got faster, her body writhing beneath her, her hips moving into the thrusts of Adelaide’s fingers and her cunt clenching rhythmically around them moving inside of her, going tighter when Adelaide’s thumb began playing with her clit. When Catherine came moments later, she let out a loud, gasping noise. Her whole body arched, going taut and tense for a long, drawn-out moment until she relaxed back down, panting and spent, but Adelaide didn’t stop the movement of her hand between Catherine’s legs. She kept thrusting her fingers in Catherine’s soaked cunt. She kept pressing her thumb almost roughly into Catherine’s clit, circling it, fondling it as Catherine’s hips jerked into her hand despite the desperate noises Catherine was making at the overstimulation.

Catherine came faster the second time and it didn’t last as long, but it took more out of her. She looked exhausted, flushed and sweat-drenched, against the sheets afterwards. Her eyes were shut, her chest rising up and down quickly with how fast she was breathing. Her body was limp beneath Adelaide, splayed out and weakened. Her own hand had fallen away from between Adelaide’s legs the moment she began to come and now rested curled up on her belly, Adelaide’s own pleasure forgotten.

Adelaide didn’t care, already coming down from the rise to the orgasm she had been fumbling towards but never quite made it to. She only looked down at Catherine now and considered pushing to make her come for a third time, to go for a fourth or more, but discarded the idea. She was too filled with anticipation over something that had nothing to do with sex and coming seemed a small pleasure compared to everything else that awaited her.

Catherine’s eyes stayed shut. Her breathing began to even out. She swallowed and tilted her neck back, sighing with satisfication, and only shuddered a little when Adelaide pulled her hand away from her. 

Adelaide committed the image of Catherine there like that to memory as best as she could, knowing she would never see it again. She took in Catherine’s messy hair, her blushing cheeks, her lips red and wet from kissing, the glisten of sweat all over her skin. She tried to remember Catherine’s voice then, too. Her laugh and her smile. She took the image she had formed and put it in a box inside of her, locked it, and put it on the highest shelf in her mind to be taken out later when she felt the need to remember.

When Adelaide reached forward to pull the knife out from under the pillow Catherine’s head wasn’t quite resting on, Catherine didn’t react, already on the way to falling asleep. Her eyes stayed shut as Adelaide took the knife by the hilt and didn’t open even when Adelaide raised it and brought it brutally down. 

By the time the sharp point of it cut Catherine’s throat, it was already to late for her to so much as scream.

*

It took thirty-seven seconds for Catherine to die. 

Five second of arterial blood spraying across Adelaide’s face and the bareness of her skin.

Twelve seconds of Catherine flopping on the mattress like a fish dumped out of water onto a dry floor, her eyes shocked into opening, her mouth incapable of making any noise more than a choke.

Twenty seconds of her being as still as a corpse as the blood continued to pour out of her onto the sheets.

Adelaide straddled her and watched and counted the seconds down one at a time and then when she put her fingers to Catherine’s wrist to feel for a pulse, she found nothing there. 

She stared down at Catherine, the flush now bled out of her cheeks, her body still warm beneath her, and exhaled a long, shaky breath. The knife was still in her hand as she pushed her hair back, Catherine’s blood making it slick and sticky. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest with exhileration and impatience both, but she forced herself to calm down and told herself that she had plenty of time.

An alpha’s heart was still good for hours after the alpha had died and it had only been minutes. 

Adelaide had all the time in the world.

She reviewed everything she had learned to prepare for this moment in her head, thinking mainly of the old books she had downloaded online. Books whose original copies were kept in museums or national libraries, written by omegas from hundreds of years ago about every facet of their lives. Plenty of the information was out of date, their recommendations for pre-natal care being particularly gastly considerig the strides of modern medicine, but the human body was much the same. An alpha’s heart was still in the same place and removing it was still a matter of knowing where to cut.

Adelaide knew where to cut. 

She’d studied everything from that old history to videos of modern surgery to make sure she would, her obsession these last few months second only to the time she had spent stalking and then reeling in Catherine herself. There were nights when Adelaide would dream of what it would be like to remove the heart from an alpha’s chest and she would wake up with her hand still clenched as though it had been wrapped around a scalpel in her sleep.

This wasn’t a dream now, however, and Adelaide could feel her body flush in anticipation over the task ahead of her. 

She took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, then did it again and again until she felt nothing but calm.

When she put the tip of the knife against Catherine’s belly, right below her ribs, her hand was steady. 

When she pushed the blade in, it was sharp enough that it felt like she was cutting through butter. 

Adelaide took her time, careful in her every movement, but it wasn’t hard to go from there. 

An incision down Catherine’s still warm abdomen, not deep enough to puncture the organs beneath but enough so that Adelaide could slide her knife inside and cut through the diaphragm which was tougher than the first cut of Catherine’s skin had been but gave way to the blade anyway, inevitably. Adelaide pulled her knife out after that and sat it to the side and with calmness still thrumming through her as physically as a vibration, she reached inside of the opening she had made in Catherine’s skin with one hand and pushed it up, her fingers reaching, her knuckles knocking against ribs, her whole hand as warm and wet from Catherine’s blood as it was from her cunt not so long before.

Adelaide reached up until finally she found what she was looking for and then her hand grasped Catherine’s heart and with a slick yank, jerked it down and pulled it out so that she could see it with her own two eyes.

It looked nothing like a drawn, Valentine’s kind of heart. There was nothing cartoonish or romantic about it, but instead something raw and animalistic. A piece of meat you’d get from a butcher, about twice the size of Adelaide’s fist.

It was still hot, hot enough that it felt like it should be pumping, but in Adelaide’s hand it was totally still. She could smell the sharp, meaty, penny smell of it even before she brought it to her mouth but as Adelaide brought it closer, the smell increased. Her stomach clenched with something like hunger, a hunger from deep in the pit of herself that she had never felt before, and her cunt throbbed with need.

Adelaide didn’t hesitate before she took her first bite from the heart or the second or the third. 

She ate voraciously, with effort. Her jaw ached with how long she had to chew, but every piece she managed to swallow down tasted like pure, unadulterated ecstasy in physical form. A part of Adelaide – a romantic, sentimental part – imagined that she could feel her child growing within her already, coming together bit by bit with every piece of Catherine’s heart she consumed.

It took longer to eat the entirety of it than it did to take it out, but Adelaide did finish, sucking the blood from her fingers once she was.

She felt exhausted then, her belly full and bloated. Catherine’s body was still beneath her, cooling, but Adelaide knew there was no rush to deal with disposing of her just yet. She had time to rest, to recuperate, to let the alpha’s heart now within her break down and grow, to dream about the future it would give her.

Adelaide laid down on the blood wet sheets and with a hand pressed protectively to her stomach, slept, a smile on her face as she dreamed about the child the dead alpha next to her had provided her.


End file.
